The Workshop of a Wizard

...Turns Out to Have Clues...

…About his Future.

Obanar had told her she needed to get in touch with the rest of the Order of the Black Feather to make it back to her own time. They had a blue gem which could be used to teleport through time.

She searched several wings and came up empty. No secret doors revealed their secrets. When she moved further from the main entry, a trap in the floor shot lightning bolts at her: No damage, but she sure jumped.

Past the trap, she found a door partially blocked by Andrea’s Trihorn Behemoth. She managed to forced the door open without pushing the creature into the pit beyond.

“At least I know I’m on the right path,” she told herself.

And soon she heard sounds of a fight.

Roland pulled the bloodstained dagger from the Lord Warden’s body. The orders from Tiamat were still in his hand. The next thing he knew he found himself standing atop a fog-capped hill. Similar hills surrounded a jungle valley that stretched before him. He buried the dagger where no one could find it. But he could not bury the orders from the Queen of Treachery: They were no longer in his hand when he found himself in this strange domain.

He first got through the door by teleporting past it. The gargoyles made him nervous, but it turned out they were not alive, just traps. When Andrea broke open the door to rescue him, flames came shooting out of the mouths of the stone statues, but she was able to withstand the flames.

Still, he was surrounded by two Boneclaws before Andrea could get to him. The Warlord was barely able to keep him alive as the Boneclaws attacked with their reach. And the Skeletal Guardians seemed to be able to get their attacks off more often than they should.

Usually on Nox.

They explained their theories on what was triggering the attacks to Relvain when she got there. But then another one appeared and Andrea became convinced they were creating the arcane creatures.

Relvain began beating her shield in a war-like rhythm and they all turned toward her. First one Boneclaw went down and then the other. Then they surrounded the skeletal figures.

“I guess Acererak is already turning to necromancy, judging by the nature of his minions.”

“I get it,” Andrea Ravn told the others. “We’re not creating them when they pop out of nowhere. They must have been created specially for wizards and sorcerers. Whenever Nox casts an arcane spell, they teleport right next to him.”

Once they finished off the skeletons, they searched the room.

“Obviously a workshop,” Andrea observed. The evidence of necromantic experimentation was all around them, especially in the partially dissected troll on one of the tables.

Andrea found plenty of residuum for her rituals.

“I may not have a lot of them, but this will enable me to do them more often.”

The blue gem glowed brighter whenever they moved it toward the southwest — or what they presumed was the southwest from the position of the late afternoon sun coming through the windows.

And, when they took it into the back room, it just pointed them back toward the stairwell.

Then they found a hallway that led back to the stairwell — at a higher level — and to the wizard’s library. Andrea burst in and saw two piles of bones among the books. But it was a skull with glowing eyes that attracted her attention.